Post to the Host
GK responds to queries on topics from childbearing to potato salad, with a little bookstore fetish in between.

Send your own post to the host.
Here's your chance to ask GK your most pressing questions—about the writing life, the radio life, Lake Wobegon, Guy Noir, whatever you like. Also, feel free to send feedback about the show. Honest comments and criticism are always welcome!

Hello GK,

I listen to your radio show on the weekends and especially love hearing the sound effects guy make all those weird sounds. Have you ever had a Sound Effects Woman? If you ever did, I would like to know more about her.

Thank you very much,

Gene Spratley
Henrico, VA

The women I know have much too much dignity to sit around making popping, squeaking, squishing, squorting, farting, mooing, oinking sounds, Gene, and that's why you don't find them in this particular field. Women have the small motor skills necessary to do clip-clops with coconut shells or footsteps with shoes in a gravel box or other mechanical effects, but in the radio drama business, we require a sound-effects person to do many many vocal effects. You cannot do a believable champagne-cork pop, for example, using props ---- it must be done vocally. Likewise, the mating call of a mature badger ---- you can buy a device that you blow into and make that call, but it lacks emotional resonance: only a vocal effect will do. And the women I know would feel it is beneath them to do a mating badger cry. Of course the women I know tend to be educated, sensitive, literate, well-informed ----- the typical public-radio-listening type ----- and I'm sure there are ill-bred, crude, peasant women out there who can do the job, but would they be willing to relocate to St. Paul, Minnesota, and fly on scheduled airlines to such places as New York, Chicago, and San Diego? I doubt it.

This is a long answer to your question, but make no mistake, Gene: we would love to have a sound-effects woman. Fred and Tom are getting older. Both are great with horns, explosions, firearms, animal cries, appliances, etc., but less great when it comes to more emotional effects, such as crying, sighing, whimpering, shuddering, and righteous indignation. Whenever I write a sketch and I put in "(LONG TREMULOUS SIGH OF FRUSTRATION)" our sfx guys are stymied. The women I've known in my life could do long tremulous sighs without thinking about it.

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To: GK

Do you have any plans to resume writing The Old Scout? I miss it terribly!

-Cindy McDaniel
Arlington, IN

I took a vacation from the weekly newspaper column last summer because it was chewing up my Mondays and part of my Tuesdays. Like everyone who ever ventured into newspaper columnizing, I figured on the job being easy, like mowing a lawn, and instead it turned out to be like hanging wallpaper. In other words, maddening. I had a 750-word limit and wanted to carve a light-hearted essay in that space that could range from the political to personal history to the doings of my sandy-haired daughter, but never quite got the hang of it, I'm afraid, and meanwhile was spending a lot of hours deleting and rewriting. I'd like to resume the column someday, and see if I can find the tone I was looking for. It's all about tone, or voice. Once you find it, you can write in the dark.

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Dear Garrison,

I have 2 young boys( 6&9) who really would love to see your show live in San Diego. We listen and laugh @ the show on the radio and want to confirm that the show would be appropriate for them live.

Thank you,
Selise Pastore

I think they'd love it, Selise. Drop me a line and I'll get them seats on stage and that way they can see Fred Newman close up as he does the dolphins steering the submarine past the humpback whales and firing the sausage pizzas over the volcano (thereby cooking them) and into the speeding car chased by coyotes. And they can observe Peter Johnson doing paradiddles on the drums as the Guy's All-Star Shoe Band strikes up the Bebopareebop theme. Appropriate??? Appropriateness has been a lifelong goal of mine. And nine is the perfect age for a Prairie Home listener. Snorts and honks and explosions a-plenty.

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